My Life with Plants: A journey to new ways of breeding garden varieties

By Richard W. Gibson

After a long career in agricultural research in the UK and then in Africa, Richard Gibson ‘retired’ and got an allotment. In his work, he had found that African smallholders often rejected varieties bred for them on research stations – and that participatory plant breeding (PPB) was the solution. He was somewhat surprised to find that modern varieties of vegetables also had, on the whole, not been bred to be ‘fit for gardeners’ purposes’, instead commercial interests dominating. Once again, PPB seems appropriate but it takes some very recent and exciting developments to enable this to work for UK gardeners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839781780

Book preview

My life with plants

A journey to new ways of breeding garden varieties

Richard W. Gibson

My life with plants

Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2021

Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com [e-mail]

ISBN 978-1-839781-78-0

Copyright © Richard W. Gibson, 2021

The moral right of Richard W. Gibson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk

The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

The change from wispy grass [teosinte] to the robust corn we all know is an incredible transformation, and I find myself in awe of the people who accomplished it.

J. Tychonievich 2013. Plant breeding for the home gardener. How to create unique vegetables and flowers. Timber Press. 215pp.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to thank my parents for helping me to be a free spirit and Mr Trinder, my biology teacher at Wisbech Grammar School for allowing me to become a free thinker. Long Ashton and Rothamsted continued that process whilst NRI showed me how the world really worked.

Of course I must thank my family but especially my son Thomas for being the inspiration of its first iteration. Writing a memoir for him provided a manageable first target without which I could never have contemplated writing this book.

Many other people and experiences during my career inspired how it then developed. A conversation with Ray Warner of Thomas Etty Esq triggered one of the key ideas and Ben Gable (Real Seeds) forced me to think more precisely about the term ‘open pollinated’. Linda and Brian read an early version and I must thank fellow allotmenteers, Andy and Richard, and my lifelong friends Trevor and Sid for their valued comments after reading all the way through final versions of the book. They all encouraged me to keep going and publish it. And Charlotte (of Bookstyle) kept me polishing it. Thank you all!

The image of the ‘The party coloured Kidney Beane of Egypt’ used on the front cover comes from John Gerard(e)’s ‘Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes’ (1597). http://www.biolib.de

PREFACE

Breeding new varieties is the very core of gardening – without it, gardeners have only wild plants to grow – yet there is a malaise present.

This is most strongly evidenced by the retention of our own heirloom varieties, some of which are more than a hundred years old, and the importing of others but the popularity of wild flower gardens and wild plants in flower gardens also indicates it.

This book describes how modern plant breeding works, how seed businesses are currently structured and how these have led to suitable varieties for commercial growers but often unsuitable ones for gardeners. It also includes a description of my plant breeding career, my enthusiasm for allotments and how these together have contributed to this analysis.

It follows on to suggest that participatory plant breeding with gardeners, enabled by the internet, is what is needed to enable modern varieties to work for gardeners. It illustrates this by some truly amazing examples of how enthusiastic gardeners and professional plant breeders have collaborated.

This new option for breeding modern vegetable varieties in the UK seems equally relevant elsewhere and to garden fruit and flower breeding too. And it should make plant breeding a satisfying and enjoyable occupation for the many rather than a few academically trained scientists.

ACRONYMS & REFERENCES

Actually there aren’t many acronyms used. The main one is PPB which is short for participatory plant breeding. That’s the key one to remember (and I do keep writing it out in full anyway).

NRI is also used a few times and is short for my second and final place of work, the Natural Resources Institute at Chatham Maritime in Kent, UK.

Otherwise, the acronyms used are written out in full very close to where they occur.

I’ve also tried to avoid ‘jargon’ words as much as possible and, when used, I’ve tried to give readers strong clues to their meaning wherever possible.

I have given as references articles that can be accessed via the internet where possible as this is the easiest source for most readers. These are given at the end of the relevant chapter.

I have listed books which had a great influence on writing this book at its very end because most had a general beneficial influence throughout, rather than to a specific section or chapter. Where they are specifically relevant, I mention them by author, e.g., Carol Deppe’s book on vegetable breeding.

PART I

SETTING THE SCENE

An introduction to:

The origin of the book

My gradually developing interest in and knowledge of plant breeding during mycareer

A brief introduction to allotments and the UK Peabean

CHAPTER 1

SETTING THE SCENE

This chapter describes how the book evolved and how it is structured.

Introduction

Plant breeding is immensely important. After creating clothes for ourselves and making tools, it was probably our next critical invention and must rank similarly in importance.

Nonetheless, this book had its birth as a history of me. Nothing special; just something for the family. After a career spanning nearly fifty years (I really enjoyed my jobs!), retirement loomed and writing a ‘memoir’ seemed a good idea.

I was nearly 40 years old when my son was borne so there was a lot of my life he hadn’t experienced. Writing things down also seemed a way of him knowing me better.

Writing the memoir, however, showed me that my experiences were mainly of plant breeding, even if my first degree was in entomology.

I did my PhD at the horticultural Long Ashton Research Station. I then spent the next twenty years at Rothamsted Experimental Station, the main agricultural research station in the UK, followed by almost thirty years at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) managing overseas projects and providing technical assistance as a plant virologist to smallholders in Africa. For this last job, I mostly spent at least a quarter of my time in Africa and lived in Uganda full time with my family for three of those years. And plant breeding touched all of these periods.

My involvement with it started early on; during my PhD studies I discovered that a few wild species of potatoes from S America possessed sticky hairs on their foliage that provided them with insect resistance. This breakthrough sent me for one and a half years to the International Potato Center in Peru, a centre of plant breeding expertise, and led to Cornell University in the USA releasing two insect-resistant potato varieties for gardeners and organic growers.

Probably my most useful contribution to UK farmers was identifying a few plants of ryegrass from ancient grass pastures that were resistant to Ryegrass mosaic virus. They were passed to plant breeders at the then Welsh Plant Breeding Station who bred resistant varieties.

At the Natural Resources Institute, my work helping poor smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa improve their farming practices included working with plant breeders who were breeding new varieties for them.

There, I observed that many of the varieties weren’t adopted. Other scientists gave me the knowledge that such plant breeders, based on research stations, were so separated from their smallholder clients that the varieties they bred were often inappropriate to smallholders’ needs. Their answer to the gap was that smallholders should participate in breeding alongside plant breeders so each could understand the other better.

My subsequent projects used this idea to breed varieties of cassava and sweet potato which were widely adopted by Ghanaian and Ugandan smallholders respectively. With my earlier link to potatoes, I had been involved in breeding all three of the most important root crops in the world!

Retired in the UK, some of the modern varieties of vegetables I grew in my garden and allotment seemed to have exactly the same type of failings as I had encountered previously in Africa.

Could there similarly be a gap in understanding between gardeners and developed country plant breeders? This gave me the idea that the memoir written for my son could easily be expanded into a book on plant breeding!

It starts with me ‘discovering’ the UK Pea bean, a mini-story in itself. This is followed by a more detailed description of my perspective on plant breeding.

It describes the science of plant genetics – though I try to keep it fairly non-technical – how it underpins modern plant breeding and actually how wonderful it is in many ways. Nonetheless, this is the start to the explanation of the failings of modern varieties for gardeners.

It also describes how heirloom varieties evolved and why gardeners are retaining them. Most virtues of heirloom varieties that are currently extolled are that they are open pollinated, that they are not F1 hybrids or genetically modified and that they are tasty and resilient. Allotments are in some ways another ‘heritage’ phenomenon and there is a general section on them too.

How modern seed companies are structured led me to the concept that the main reasons why modern varieties are often unsuitable for gardeners are ‘who’ breeds them (big business, with an emphasis on profits), ‘why’ (for commercial growers) and ‘where’ (on research stations).

If this is right, we need to change who is doing it, why they are doing it and where they are doing it. So there is a section on the current and possible alternative actors in plant breeding.

The book also describes how participatory plant breeding was probably invented in The Netherlands for breeding potatoes, developed more elsewhere and is revolutionising plant breeding for smallholders in the developing world.

It finishes by describing some of the very recent and remarkable ways that gardeners in Europe are beginning to work together and with others to breed new varieties of vegetables, using the internet and a participatory approach.

I actually am very lucky: the completion of my working career and the writing of this book coincide exactly with the coming together of ideas that are enabling gardeners to work both together and with plant breeders to get the varieties they really want!

So, as well as identifying a problem (or opportunity, as developing country scientists like to say), the ending is also very optimistic!

CHAPTER 2

INTRODUCTION TO ALLOTMENTS AND THE UK PEA BEAN

This chapter mainly describes the amazing story of the UK Pea bean and how my life recently became entangled in it.

The story

I’ve been a runner bean man since I was ‘knee high to a grasshopper’, learning the skills and benefits of their production from my father. So, when we got our first house and garden, I followed his example and went through the palaver of digging a trench, filling it with garden compost and then planting carefully-raised bean plants alongside a framework of bamboo canes.

I grew the same heirloom variety, Scarlet Emperor, as my father, probably as did his father too. They usually did really well, with a long and continuous yield of tasty runner beans summer-long, except in hot dry summers.

By 2000, climate change and increasing weather variability was becoming evident in Africa – and became an important part of my work. Also at home, a friend I played badminton with kept extolling the virtues of climbing common (= French) beans over runner beans. He kept telling me how they yielded more, more reliably in dry weather, tasted better etc.

I tried the well-established American variety Blue Lake and was very impressed. It had a high yield of very tasty green beans and the plants just kept on and on yielding, as long as we remembered to keep picking them. I generally didn’t have to water them either. Indeed, in future years I became more and more impressed as they survived, yea thrived, even in the hot dry summers that seem more and more to be the norm for the South-East of England where I lived.

Now retired, I am at my home in Canterbury most of the time whereas most of my friends were associated with my work in Chatham, about 30 miles from Canterbury, and in Africa. Getting an allotment seemed a possible way of making new friends as well as growing nice fresh food.

Having an allotment also seemed a good idea because it should be familiar – it seemed the closest we get in the UK to the life of an African smallholder – except that survival of an allotment holder is not generally dependent on the successful production of crops. Allotments are also smaller than a typical African smallholding but the same working in a small community seemed likely to apply and to generate friendships easily.

Also, my general agricultural knowledge couldn’t but help, even if my African experiences might not be directly useful. It also appealed to me that I’d be seeing things from the ‘other side of the fence’: I’d now be the one who was growing the crop and, even though I knew how to grow cassava and sweet potato, I’d be the one looking for advice from fellow allotment holders on, for example, when to plant broad beans or carrots!

One day, I noticed in our local newspaper that a local allotment society was having its Annual General Meeting. I rang them up, they said they were very happy for me to come along and so one cold winter’s evening in January found me in a small steamy hall, cups of tea being handed out.

Importantly I learnt that there were allotments available. So, I signed up for a half plot! I hadn’t even retired by then, though there was only a month or two to go: I was on my way!

At this first meeting, I sat myself next to a young couple. We introduced ourselves: Sam was from Maine in USA with a job in the Cathedral choir and Jess was a violin teacher from Yorkshire. I had just met my first friends at the allotment site and I even bumped into Sam in